Outlets Retract Stories After Realizing Report Actually Cites How Many Children the Obama Administration Detained

Multiple outlets deleted entire stories Tuesday after falsely reporting the number of children in migrant-related U.S. custody.

Outlets including Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), NPR and Aljazeera jumped on a report from the United Nations, writing Monday that the country has the world’s highest rate of detained children. The outlets reported that there are currently more than 100,000 children in immigration-related custody, which violates international law.

A day later, Reuters and AFP deleted their stories after the U.N. clarified the numbers were from 2015, when former President Barack Obama was in office. AFP did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it no longer felt the numbers were newsworthy after being informed they were from 2015.

“Reuters decided to withdraw its story after the United Nations issued a statement on November 19 saying the number of children in detention was not current but was for the year 2015,” a Reuters spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. . .

AFP is withdrawing this story.

The author of the report has clarified that his figures do not represent the number of children currently in migration-related US detention, but the total number of children in migration-related US detention in 2015.

We will delete the story. https://t.co/p30UjEWl7u

— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 19, 2019

Aljazeera updated its article, which is now headlined “UN expert corrects claims on children in US migration.” The article notes that the data is from the Obama administration, but a large portion of it is still dedicated to scrutinizing illegal immigration under Trump. (Read more from “Outlets Retract Stories After Realizing Report Actually Cites How Many Children the Obama Administration Detained” HERE)

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